


Safe and Sound

by urcool91



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cocaine, Drug Addiction, Gen, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urcool91/pseuds/urcool91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock knows that the contents of his safe are illegal. Written for mid0nz's tumblr contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe and Sound

The cocaine started, like so many other things in his life, as an experiment. Another thing used to keep the boredom at bay, in his (very important) research in the drug culture and how different drugs affected the human brain. At least, that's what he told himself. Cocaine, he had decided, was the best simulator of mental engagement, and therefore the primary drug in his continued experiments.

 

He bought the safe shortly afterwards. It was to be used to hold his samples of different (illegal) drugs, all carefully labeled, to be used when he was bored. All for the great and noble purpose of Science, he would have assured you, and then shown you the notes detailing what he could remember of his last high. Sometimes he almost convinced himself of the story's truth.

 

Gradually, every so gradually, the safe's vial began to bear only one label- "C." He uses "C" more and more, so used to the mental highs that the inevitable crashes are unbearable, tearing his brain to shreds. All this he still claims is for Science. The tracks run up and down his arms, dark and twisted even more than the once genius mind, but still he insists on the validity of his experiment.

 

The first overdose comes because of the familiar routine of trying to avoid the crash. He injects at shorter and shorter intervals, with more and more of his 7% solution, until finally his body, his transport, can't take the filthy liquid. He wakes up in a hospital, his older brother folded up awkwardly in a pink plastic chair by his bedside.

 

He stays in the hospital a week, does the required 30 days of rehab, ignores Mycroft's attempts to admit him into a clinic, and goes back to his usual habits. But now his brother is being an annoying dick and poking his nose where it doesn't belong, so he had to be stealthy. It is probably only this necessity that caused him to take six months to OD again.

 

This time he does die. It's only for maybe half a minute, but that's enough. His brother forces him into a brand spanking new rehab facility manned by the best in Britain. He hates it there, hates the fact that his brain isn't doing anything, that he is filled with so much energy and potential that he's about to explode. The nurses and doctors don't, won't, and can't understand. They think he needs rest. He can't stand rest; he needs mental stimulations, either that or the drug.

 

The police sergeant is his savior. It starts slowly, with a couple of cold cases, but when Lestrade figures out that he's able to solve them easily, in a couple of days at the most, he begins bringing him more and more. He sneaks in the things he needs to conduct his experiments, his real experiments. Best of all, his brother approves, so Lestrade is able to have yards of red tape cut through.

 

Slowly life begins to take shape again. He moves back to his flat when the bangs and cracks from his room disturb the other patients, but he doesn't relapse. He can't, or else there will be no more cases. His old ambitions take the place of the cocaine. His brother pays a small charter airline to fly him to Florida, where he solves a high-profile murder/torture case and makes two new allies in the process.

 

Three years later, when he is moving to his new flat on Baker Street, he finds that safe. His fingers stumble over the combination, and he opens it to find the same orderly, familiar rows of cocaine. He blinks. It is only now that he realizes that he had almost completely deleted the safe, and with it the last of the drug that he had so often craved. He grasps one of the vials, feeling triumphant; though he is not sure he will dash it to the ground or plunge a needle into his veins. Eventually he puts it back and closes the safe, loading it into the car with the rest.

 

Sometimes Sherlock wonders what John would think of the secrets stashed away in the innocent-looking safe behind the doctor's cozy armchair. John would disapprove, no doubt, but Sherlock likes to think that eventually his friend would understand. It makes Sherlock feel powerful to have that insidious specter that almost destroyed him at his beck and call yet to never use it. He still feels the need, of course, on occasion. But then Lestrade will text him the address to the next crime scene, or Mycroft will stop by for Sherlock to insult, or John will distract him with another adorable domestic quibble, and he'll be fine again. And really, he's won, he thinks, and found the answer to that fraudulent experiment to boot. Adrenaline and love are the two best drugs to keep him from being (too) bored.


End file.
